“Leverage the visual display of quantitative information to enhance cognition and reach better business conclusions faster!” says Keith. That’s really the point of data visualization—to enhance cognition and reach better business conclusions.

Recent blog posts, discussions, tweets, and redesigns related to this topic had me thinking more about text tables, which sometimes can't be avoided. Here are some things to consider when designing text tables.

1. Consider the purpose of the text table and the audience

Data-viz designers should not be redesigning these tables simply because they are "boring," as tempting as that might be. That's not the purpose of data visualization.

There are certain industries and instances where tables are expected or even required—for example, balance sheets, income statements, cash-flow statements, bank statements, bank-reconciliation reports, etc.

These are long established reporting formats and should not simply be disregarded as boring and subject to various redesigns. They can serve an expected purpose and would create far more confusion to the typical audience of those reports if they were not presented in their standard format.

Maybe someday the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) will change the way we visualize financial statements, but until then, the financial world is very much used to seeing things in this standard format. (It’s interesting to note that FASB requires the tabular format in certain cases because the board believes the format offers more transparency).

Even when the table is not the expected form of communication, users often need tables to do their job. Executives, vice presidents, and directors may not need the details in their dashboard or report, but somewhere in the organization, there is someone who needs to work at a very detailed level, and that person may need a simple table of information to do his or her job.

2. Consider the data

There are also instances in which there are no measures in the data. For example, I created a Tableau “visualization” of the music library at my church while my wife was serving as the interim music director.

The “client” simply wanted an online catalog. I built and uploaded a Tableau viz. It’s really just a searchable text table. There isn’t a single chart or graph; there are only columns of dimensions that people can search from their computer, tablet, or phone to get more details.

The viz links to a YouTube search for reference, and people can print lists as a PDF as necessary. It’s exactly what this audience needed. They didn’t want or need metrics about their music library; they simply wanted to be able to search it by various dimensions.

In this paper, Ben discusses seven tasks that a user wants to perform:

Overview: Gain an overview of the entire collectionZoom: Zoom in on items of interestFilter: Filter out uninteresting itemsDetails on Demand: Select an item or a group and get details when neededRelate: View relationships among itemsHistory: Keep a history of actions to support undo, replay, and progressive refinementExtract: Allow extraction of sub-collections and the query parameters

Some of these tasks imply an interactive visualization (for example, zooming and filtering won’t be available on a printed report). However, some of these same principles apply. A report or a dashboard can provide the overview as a main page, then the details on demand can be supplemental materials, possibly a text table.

If it’s an interactive visualization, that’s even better. Give people the ability to filter down to the level that they require and then retrieve the details on demand (again, this could be a text table).

4. Formatting is key

Just like charts or data visualizations in general, format and design are very important. Poorly-formatted text tables can be very frustrating and lead to wrong conclusions.

When creating tables or financial reports, the numbers should be aligned right and the font should have tabular figures that are monospaced or fixed-width, not proportional. This vertical spacing allows numbers to align in a table, which is very important for purposes of scanning the table to make quick comparisons of numbers.

Note: When simply using a table of numbers, the font doesn’t have to be entirely monospaced; the rule only applies to the numbers.

Check out the table below. Which fonts make the number comparisons quick and easy?

Notice how well Arial works when scanning up and down the column. This is the current default font in Tableau.

The order of the table is another important point to consider. Unlike charts where it’s often best to order by some sort of quantitative field, maybe descending sum of sales, there might be other ways to order a table. For example, alphabetical order can often be very useful in a reference table to look up information. Ordering by date might be important in other instances.

In addition, consider the context of the information and the level of precision needed. Does your reader need the details of the table down to two decimal places? This level of precision might be needed on a bank reconciliation report in the accounting department where they have to tie transactions to the penny, but it’s probably not needed on a monthly sales report.

5. Know the strengths and weaknesses of text tables

Text tables have their place. We see them in places we don’t even realize—displaying movie times, prices on a menu, store catalogs, sports scores, reference tables, or even a phone list. Also, consider that Tableau actually lists the text table in the Show Me tab as the very first chart type.

Stephen Few sums this up very well in The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction: “This table does two things extremely well: it expresses these sales values precisely and it provides an efficient means to look up values for a particular region and month.” That’s what text tables are really good for—a list of precise values that can be looked up.

He also explains what a text table does not do well—seeing trends and patterns in the data: “What these numbers could not communicate when presented as text in a table, which our brains interpret through the use of verbal processing, becomes visible and understandable when communicated visually. This is the power of data visualization.”

If formatted correctly and used in the right context, then there is no reason that text tables can’t be included in the data visualization toolbox. Like so many chart types in the field of data visualization, text tables, when formatted poorly or used in the wrong context, can obscure things in the data and bombard the reader with too much information at the wrong level of detail.

You might also consider offering the reader both a chart and a table. This allows the reader to see the trends in the data, but have the details if they need them. Microsoft Excel calls this a “data table” that can be shown below the chart, but this can also be done in Tableau simply by putting two worksheets together for the same result.

In the example below, we can easily see the fourth-quarter trend of sales or the second-quarter dip in 2011 for technology. But we can also look up the exact sales numbers in any quarter for any category without cluttering the chart with data labels or axis labels.

Do you use text tables as part of your workflow? Have design tips to share? Let us know in the comments below.

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Comments

Submitted by Jeff Strauss on April 28, 2016 - 1:05pm

thank you for the valuable insight. I totally concur on the mantra. Something to be considered as well is that it doesn't apply to only text but rather any content in a huge row / column grid. Such as I've seen an analyst viz that has a lot of rows and columns with each column having a variable mark type (i.e. bar, star, text).

Yes, I think Calibre works very well. Unfortunately, as one of the Microsoft "C" fonts, it's not as universal as Arial. It has been problematic on the Mac and various browsers. But as a PC guy it works great for me. If able to use a custom font, there as some other great choices too. The Minion example worked really well too.

As we migrate away from tabular displays of data at our organization, it helped to build confidence in understanding the visualizations by providing the data table underneath the visualization. Now a year into the project, I am going by the 80/20 rule where 80% of my audience now prefers the visualization, but 20% still really only want that tabular display. I am redesigning the pages with a filter drop down option to toggle between the visual and tabular display in order to maintain white space with the default set for my 80%'ers and displaying the visualization. That's the beauty of Tableau, it's flexible enough to handle the needs of many in one dynamic view :)

Thanks for the mention, and it's great to have this resource available now as reference material when teaching Tableau!

I actually find text tables to be of fundamental importance to my work with Tableau. In fact, I can't imagine working without them, and almost every Tableau workbook I build includes a text table! So I'm thrilled, because this post does a great job of identifying when & where a text table is appropriate and how to make them most of them.

The ideal audience for my "Open Letter to the Wall of Data" post are those who might seek to use giant text tables in the "Overview" or "Zoom & Filter" steps of a Guided Analysis. This folks will frequently want to use _only_ a text table (and nothing more).

Because a text table is great at providing "a list of precise values that can be looked up", I find them most appropriate at the end, in the "Drill to Detail". Once you've drilled to details you're interested in, then often the precision of a text table is important to offer. In the earlier Overview, Zoom & Filter phases of a Guided Analysis, I firmly believe that visualizations are the way to go.

Rendering both a chart and a text table together, or offering a choice between the two, is a wonderful way to go. And providing visual cues within the text table, for example with the sensible use of color on a highlight table, is also very helpful.

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